In the interview, Edmund Strother Phelps said that he would push businessmen to tell all the participants what were the worst obstacles confronting them from innovating.

"I thought they would talk about, they can't get financing from the financial sector, they don't have a suitable work force or there is too much regulation. But it took a long time before they began to discuss those things, but that was what I was looking for," said Edmund Strother Phelps.

When asked about America, as one of the richest countries in the world, continuing borrowing money from other countries, especially China, Edmund Strother Phelps gave his own understanding.

"The Americans' problem is that their politicians borrow too much. China's problem is that it's lending too much. China should stop lending to overseas governments at zero rates of return and zero yields on their assets. There's no point in that. What China needs to do is to stop all that or at least cut back on all that and instead train some of that saving towards start-up businesses and small businesses in the private sector where the new ideas are," said Edmund Strother Phelps.

He added that China's continuing lending money to American is useless and China needs capital invested in new ideas and new investments that follow to develop the new ideas.

Meanwhile when asked about China's decreasing population growth rate, Edmund Strother Phelpssaid that the problem is not of that importance.